Where Editors Hold Sway
By F. R. Reeves, former publisher of the Hermiston Herald
One would scarcely expect to go into any ordinary community and find that a large percentage of the population has been connected with some branch of the newspaper game before going there. Yet that very thing is the case with Hermiston. We have almost every branch of the business represented here. Or if not here now, they have lived here in the past. Hermiston is the mecca for ex-newspaper men.
The founder of the Hermiston Herald, H. G. Newport, who was one of the founders of the town, is still here, being head of the largest construction company in eastern Oregon. When he started the Herald Mr. Newport was not a printer nor an editor. Seeing the need for a paper, however, he gathered together what copy he could, took it to Pendleton and had a paper printed. He kept this up for several weeks and then turned the business over to Charles E. Baker, who knew the game thoroughly. Mr. Newport insists, however, that those first few issues of the paper were the best.
Mr. Baker himself is still a resident of Hermiston, or practically so. He owns and manages a 160 acre alfalfa ranch just at the edge of town, incidenally looking after a dairy herd of about 25 cows. Mr. Baker, who is an old linotype operator, has “printed” from Omaha west to the coast in every town that has a machine. The simple life for him now, he says, and you couldn’t drag him back into the harness.
Almost any day one can see a well-dressed, middle-aged man walking down the street. He looks much like any other man, but mention newspaper to him and he is ready for a “visit” over old times. Behold E. P. Dodd, ex-manager of the Pendleton Tribune and at other times interested in Baker publications. In Hermiston he is known as the owner of a splendid fruit ranch.
Another old-timer now out of the business who is living here is A. L. Barnes, who at one time or another has owned half a dozen newspapers. W. T. Lambert, formerly a newspaperman in Indiana, and J. J. Casserly, who ran a newspaper in North Dakota until he came here five years ago, are now prosperous farmers at Hermiston.
Out north of town is an old time pressman. Ranching suits him best, he says, but just the same he cannot resist coming into the Herald office once in a while and putting a few down.
But not all of our ex’s are ranchers. On the main street of town is a business house one of the main stockholders of which is an other former manager of a daily.
These are only a few of the many. To list all of them would tire Oregon Exchanges readers and they would believe we “faked” the story. However, we have mailing division men, bindery girls, linotype operators and the good old hand man. And all satisfied with the simple life, even though they may “hanker after the smell of ink” occasionally and pay the Herald composing room a visit. We never throw them out, for we know how it is. We once tried to quit the game but didn’t succeed. Just now we are making another effort and time can only tell the result.
Community Building Wanted
The Dufur Dispatch is agitating for the construction of a suitable “community building" or public meeting-place for the benefit of the people of Dufur and surrounding territory.
